The long-promised and long-awaited release of an MTG Arena mobile client is nearly upon us! Wizards of the Coast have announced that MTG Arena will be going into Android Early Access on 28th January, with wider Android support and an iOS release coming later in 2021.
The app will be available everywhere that MTG Arena and the Google Play store is currently available, and is a complete match for the game on PC and Mac, with full cross-platform support and all cards and formats available in the game. That includes the upcoming release of Kaldheim.
In the short term, you’ll have the following hardware requirements to meet in order to play:
Android Version: 6.0 (Marshmallow)
RAM: 4GB
Graphics API: OpenGL ES 3.0
Texture Compression: ETC2
Required Chipsets
- Kirin 970 -or-
- Snapdragon 845 -or-
- Exynos 9810
That covers a very wide range of Android devices, of course, so to try and clarify things further, WotC have also released a sample set of supported devices. The game might work on a wider range of phones, but these ones have been directly tested:
Supported Devices
- Asus ROG Phone 3
- Asus ROG Phone II
- Galaxy Note 10+
- Google Pixel 3
- Honor Play 4
- Huawei Mate 20 Pro
- Huawei Mate 30 Pro 4G
- Huawei Mate 30 Pro 5G
- Huawei P20 Pro
- Huawei P30 Pro
- LG G7 ThinQ
- Motorola One 5G
- OnePlus 6T
- OnePlus 7 Pro
- OnePlus 8
- Oppo Reno 3 Vitality
- Oppo Reno3 5G
- Realme v3
- Redmi 10X Pro 5G
- Redmi K30 5G Racing
- Samsung Galaxy A71 5G
- Samsung Galaxy Note 9
- Samsung Galaxy S10
- Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra
- Samsung Galaxy S9
- Sony Xperia XZ2
- Sony Xperia XZ3
- Vivo Y70s
- Xiaomi Redmi K30 Ultra
The mobile client for MTG Arena has been long in the making, with Hasbro promising in 2019 that it “Magic Arena will move to mobile in 2020.” That obviously didn’t come to pass, with the company pushing further announcements back to last autumn and then stalling further until they could now announce this Early Access release.
Around that time, Nic speculated and wrote about how MTG Arena can get its mobile release right. I’m sure he’ll follow up later this month to say if they have!
Source: WotC
